Actually I Do Care

Wow! I was at the James St markets this morning grabbing a coffee, when a chappy in the line ahead of me spent $90 on meat. It was a small rack of lamb. Delightful, however it struck me as actually kind of vulgar that anyone would spend that on a small portion of meat. There is a strange and tragic imbalance in our society. How do we fix it?

I am reading a book by Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save. Acting now to end world poverty.
http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/

He discusses how we as a western nation quite blissfully rationalise our excessive spending whilst whole nations starve to death. Buying an extra bottle of wine, but we won't donate to a charity providing care for orphans living in horrendous circumstances. We have so many justifications for living to excess and not caring for those around us with much, much less.

It is not a judgemental book, but provides a great philosophical reasoning process that shows how we have all got to this point. I would highly recommend it is as splash of cold water in the face of complacency.

And i will continue to ponder on this subject for a long time to come, whilst giving what i can, when i can and encouraging my two beautiful sons to do the same.